I found this article (an excerpt below) to be something that ties in with a thing called Liberation Theology. Why this article? Because Obama attended a black church for 22 years, pastored by Jeremiah Wright, that featured the fantasy of [black] Liberation Theology. Assuming that Obama attended Sunday services throughout that time, he listened to more than 1100 sermons, delivered by Wright, proclaiming the notion and benefits of Liberation Theology. One simply cannot be in attendance for that period of time, without the message becoming a part of who that person is.
The articles significance includes the fact that this opinion was written well before Barack Obama came onto the scene. It was not a personal attack on Obama, and yet, when one reads the opinion with Obama in mind, he sees the failure in his allegiance to the failed politic of Liberation.
One simply cannot understand B Obama without the knowledge of the failure of Liberation Theology and its ties to Marxism. In 1996, the notion that Liberation was tied to Marxism was an accepted fact in academia. Likewise, in today's presidential commerce, one begins to see why Obama is open to certain Marxist opinions.
While this is not news, it is a brief review and that is what Midknight Review is all about.
Relativism: The Central Problem for Faith Today
by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
[Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, gave this address during the meeting of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with the presidents of the Doctrinal Commissions of the Bishops' Conferences of Latin America, held in Guadalajara , Mexico
In the '80s, the theology of liberation in its radical forms seemed to be the most urgent challenge for the faith of the church. [In 1986/88, Obama began attending Jeremiah Wright's church and listening to the theology that is Liberation Theology ~ editor] . It was a challenge that required both a response and a clarification because it proposed a new, plausible and at the same time practical response to the fundamental question of Christianity: namely, the problem of redemption. [Never forget that in the beginning of his presidency, B Obama accepted the Messianic hope people had in his leadership. Hands were raised in praise; worship songs were written and performed. His speech, often, had the tone of a religious leader - "Now is the time when the oceans begin to recede and the earth begins to cool "]. The very word "liberation" wanted to explain in a different and more understandable way that which, in the traditional language of the church, was called "redemption". In fact, in the background there is always the same observation: We experience a world that does not correspond to a good God. [Obama saw this world, and believed he was going to be the change this world was waiting for]. Poverty, oppression, all kinds of unjust domination, the suffering of the just and the innocent constitute the signs of the times and of all times. And we all suffer: No one can readily say to this world and to his or her own life, "Stay as you are, you are so beautiful."
From this, the theology of liberation deduced that the situation, which must not continue, could only be overcome through a radical change in the structures of this world which are structures of sin and evil. If sin exerts its power over the structures and impoverishment is programmed beforehand by them, then its overthrow cannot come about through individual conversions, but through the struggle against the structures of injustice. It was said, however, that this struggle ought to be political because the structures are consolidated and preserved through politics. Redemption, thus, became a political process for which the Marxist philosophy provided the essential guidelines. It was transformed into a task which people themselves could and even had to take into their own hands, and at the same time it became a totally practical hope: Faith, in theory, became praxis, concrete redeeming action, in the process of liberation. The fall of the European governmental systems based on Marxism turned out to be a kind of twilight of the gods for that theology of redeeming political praxis. Precisely in those places where the Marxist liberating ideology had been applied consistently, a radical lack of freedom had been produced, the horror of which now appeared out in the open before the eyes of world public opinion. [At the center of our objection to the Obama Doctrine, is the obvious and worrisome reversal of individual freedoms - referenced in this article as a general failure]. The fact is that when politicians want to bring redemption, they promise too much. [Politics, at its best, is about law and order, national survival in a wicked world, and the societal health of "the people"]. When they [politicians such as Obama] presume to do God's work, they do not become divine but diabolical.or this reason, the political events of 1989 have also changed the theological scenario.
Until then, Marxism had been the last attempt to provide a universally valid formula for the right configuration of historical action. Marxism believed it knew the structure of world history, and from there it tried to show how history could be led definitively along the right path. The fact that the presumption was based on what was apparently a strictly scientific method that totally substituted faith with science and made science the praxis gave it a strong appeal. All the unfulfilled promises of religions seemed attainable through a scientifically based political praxis . . . . [resulting in a New Age humanist/existential approach to life, the political scene, and the advancement of humanity we call "Post Modernism." Of course, science as a philosophical influence fails precisely because it is not philosophical in nature, and the New Age post modern man is left with his fables and political mythologies, and nothing more. Obama has failed because he cherishes a philosophical fantasy (Marxism as form of Utopian promise) that has proven to be empty, time and time again. While he may continue to believe that he was called for this time, reality stands in opposition to that dream, and he really does not know how to let go of that vision. He once said, speaking of himself more than others, "We are the ones we have been waiting for. Turns out, few have been waiting for him and his convoluted social theories, AND, he may not be able to accept that fact, in the final analysis].
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